Hidden Creek | Page 4

her and held up a long, threatening forefinger. It was
a playful gesture, but Sheila had a distinct little tremor of fear. She
looked up into his small, brown, pensive eyes, and her own were held
as though their look had been fastened to his with rivets.
"Now, look-a-here, Miss Arundel, don't you say 'only' to me. Nor 'but.'
Nor 'if.' Nary one of those words, if you please. Say, I've got daughters

of my own and I can manage gels. I know how. Do you know my
nickname? Well--say--it's 'Pap.' Pap Hudson. I'm the adopting kind.
Sort of paternal, I guess. Kids and dogs follow me in the streets. You
want a recommend? Just call up Mr. Hazeldean on the telephone. He's
the man that fetched me here to buy that picture off Poppa."
"Oh," said Sheila, daughter of Mark who looked at stars, "of course I
shouldn't think of asking for a recommendation. You've been only too
kind--"
He put his hand on her shoulder in its thin covering and patted it,
wondering at the silken, cool feeling against his palm.
"Kind, Miss Arundel? Pshaw! My middle name's 'Kind' and that's the
truth. Why, how does the song go--''T is love, 't is love that makes the
world go round'--love's just another word for kindness, ain't it? And it's
not such a bad old world either, eh?"
Without knowing it, with the sort of good luck that often attends the
enterprises of such men, Hudson had used a spell. He had quoted,
almost literally, her father's last words and she felt that it was a
message from the other side of death.
She twisted about in her chair, took his hand from her shoulder, and
drew it, stiff and sallow, to her young lips.
"Oh," she sobbed, "you're kind! It is a good world if there are such men
as you!"
When Sylvester Hudson went down the stairs a minute or two after
Sheila's impetuous outbreak, his sallow face was deeply flushed. He
stopped to tell the Irishwoman who rented the garret floor to the
Arundels, that Sheila's future was in his care. During this colloquy,
pure business on his side and mixed business and sentiment on Mrs.
Halligan's, Sylvester did not once look the landlady in the eye. His own
eyes skipped hers, now across, now under, now over. There are some
philanthropists who are overcome with such bashfulness in the face of
their own good deeds. But, sitting back alone in his taxicab on his way

to the station to buy Sheila's ticket to Millings, Sylvester turned his
emerald rapidly about on his finger and whistled to himself. And
cryptically he expressed his glow of gratified fatherliness.
"As smooth as silk," said Sylvester aloud.

CHAPTER III
THE FINEST CITY IN THE WORLD
So Sheila Arundel left the garret where the stars pressed close, and
went with Sylvester Hudson out into the world. It was, that morning, a
world of sawing wind, of flying papers and dust-dervishes, a world, to
meet which people bent their shrinking faces and drew their bodies
together as against the lashing of a whip. Sheila thought she had never
seen New York so drab and soulless; it hurt her to leave it under so
desolate an aspect.
"Cheery little old town, isn't it?" said Sylvester. "Gee! Millings is God's
country all right."
On the journey he put Sheila into a compartment, supplied her with
magazines and left her for the most part to herself--for which isolation
she was grateful. With her compartment door ajar, she could see him in
his section, when he was not in the smoking-car, or rather she could see
his lean legs, his long, dark hands, and the top of his sleek head. The
rest was an outspread newspaper. Occasionally he would come into the
compartment to read aloud some bit of information which he thought
might interest her. Once it was the prowess of a record-breaking hen;
again it was a joke about a mother-in-law; another time it was the
Hilliard murder case, a scandal of New York high-life, the psychology
of which intrigued Sylvester.
"Isn't it queer, though, Miss Arundel, that such things happen in the
slums and they happen in the smart set, but they don't happen near so
often with just plain folks like you and me! Isn't this, now, a real

Tenderloin Tale--South American wife and American husband and all
their love affairs, and then one day her up and shooting him! Money,"
quoth Sylvester, "sure makes love popular. Now for that little ro-mance,
poor folks would hardly stop a day's work, but just because the
Hilliards here have po-sition and spon-dulix, why, they'll run a couple
of columns about 'em for a week. What's your opinion on the subject,
Miss Arundel?"
He was continually